Revolutionary Forever

November 18, 1998

Kwame Ture will be remembered by many Americans as Stokely Carmichael, the fiery-tongued young leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who set the country on its ear in 1966 when he shouted two simple words at a rally: ``Black Power.''

It's hard to imagine that the slogan would cause so much furor, but those were revolutionary times. Mr. Ture liked his rhetoric hot, and the association between him and the slogan was sealed forever on Sunday, when he died at the age of 57.

Mr. Ture's fiery language often got the better of him, such as when he preached the overthrow of the American government. His frustration and anger were shared by many young African Americans of that time.

Unlike most other radicals of his generation, however, Mr. Ture never abandoned his passion for African nationalism and socialism. He remained a true believer until the end.

Mr. Ture helped found the All-African People's Revolutionary Party. For a while, he lived in Fidel Castro's Cuba and eventually settled in Guinea, where he made friends with West African leaders.

Times change, and Mr. Ture lived to see his political ideologies lose luster, even in Africa, where a new generation has begun importing American solutions to economic and social problems. Still, nothing could sway Mr. Ture from his conviction that Washington has been the cause of human misery everywhere; he even blamed the FBI for causing the prostate cancer from which he died.

Mr. Ture will be remembered as the 1960s revolutionary whom the ``establishment'' loved to hate. He cannot be separated from the civil rights movement that brought about considerable change in the country he loved to hate.